Nilotic peoples
The Nilotic people are people indigenous to South Sudan and the Nile Valley who speak Nilotic languages. They inhabit South Sudan and the Gambela Region of Ethiopia, while also being a large minority in Kenya, Uganda, the northern area of Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Tanzania. The Nilotic people consist of the Dinka, the Nuer, the Shilluk, the Luo peoples, the Alur, the Anuak, the Ateker peoples, the Kalenjin people and the Karamojong people also known as the Karamojong or Karimojong, Ngasa people, Datooga, Samburu, and the Maa-speaking peoples. Each of the ethnic groups mentioned have distinct languages, ethnic origins, and migration history, so the grouping under the name Nilotic or Nilotes is anthropologically contentious.
The Nilotes constitute the majority of the population in South Sudan while constituting a substantial minority in the countries of Uganda, Tanzania and Kenya. They make up a notable part of the population of North eastern Democratic Republic of Congo as well. Nilotic people are believed to number 50 million in the 21st century.
Physically, Nilotes are noted for their typically very dark skin color and lean, and occasionally tall bodies. They often possess exceptionally long limbs, particularly their distal segments.
The Nilotic people primarily adhere to Christianity and traditional beliefs, with the majority of them being Christians. A small minority of Nilotes practice the religion of Islam.
Name
The term Nilotic was used by a Church of England's clergyman named Thomas Gataker in mid to late 1600s.The terms "Nilotic" and "Nilote"' were previously used as racial subclassifications, based on anthropological observations of the supposed distinct body morphology of many Nilotic speakers. Twentieth-century social scientists have largely discarded such efforts to classify peoples according to physical characteristics, in favor of using linguistic studies to distinguish among peoples. They formed ethnicities and cultures based on a shared language. Since the late 20th century, however, social and physical scientists are making use of data from population genetics.
Nilotic and Nilote are now mainly used to refer to the various disparate people who speak languages in the same Nilotic language family. Etymologically, the terms Nilotic and Nilote derive from the Nile Valley; specifically, the Upper Nile and its tributaries, where most Sudanese Nilo-Saharan-speaking people live.
Ethnic and linguistic divisions
Languages
Linguistically, Nilotic people are divided into three subgroups:- Eastern Nilotic – Spoken by Nilotic populations in southwestern Ethiopia, eastern South Sudan, northeastern Uganda, western Kenya, and northern Tanzania, it includes languages such as Turkana and Maasai.
- * Bari-Kuku-Kakwa-Pojulu-Mundari-Nyangwara-Nyepo and others
- * Teso–Lotuko–Maa
- Southern Nilotic – Spoken by Nilotic populations in western Kenya, northern Tanzania, and eastern Uganda, it includes Kalenjin and Datog.
- * Kalenjin
- * Omotik-Datooga
- Western Nilotic – Spoken by Nilotic populations in South Sudan, Sudan, northeastern Congo, northern Uganda, southwestern Kenya, northern Tanzania, and southwestern Ethiopia, it includes the Dinka-Nuer languages, Luo languages, and the Burun languages.
- * Dinka–Nuer-Atwot
- * Luo languages
- * Burun languages
Ethnic groups
Nilotic people in Uganda includes the Luo peoples, the Ateker peoples.
In East Africa, the Nilotes are often subdivided into three general groups:
- The Plain Nilotes speak Maa languages and include the Maasai, Samburu, and Turkana peoples
- The River Lake Nilotes include the Joluo, who are part of the larger Luo group
- The Highland Nilotes are subdivided into two groups, the Kalenjin and the Datog.
- * Kalenjin: Elgeyo, Kipsigis, Marakwet, Nandi, Pokot, Sabaot, Lembus, Terik and Tugen
- * Datog: represented mainly by the Barabaig and small clusters of other Datog speakers
History
Origins
Archaeological evidence from the Lower Wadi Howar—a now-extinct river system that once flowed west of the Nile—points to the presence of mobile pastoralist communities during the Mid-Holocene. These groups practiced cattle herding, fishing, and limited agriculture, and exhibited strong cultural links with pre-Kerma societies of the Nubian Nile Valley. Artifacts such as herringbone-incised pottery, cattle burials, and signs of long-distance trade suggest their integration into a broader Eastern Sudanic cultural sphere. As the Sahara underwent increasing aridification after 4000 BCE, these populations gradually migrated eastward and southward into the Nile Valley and White Nile basin, laying early demographic and cultural foundations for what would become the Nilotic-speaking peoples.Proto-Nilotic
Contemporaneous with pre-dynastic Egyptian developments down the Nile, the formation of a proto-Nilotic identity—distinct from an earlier, broader Eastern Sudanic unity—is thought to have emerged by the third millennium BCE, likely in connection with the rise of pastoralism. Linguistic models propose that this unity occurred east of the Nile, in what is now South Sudan. However, this is complicated by archaeological evidence placing culturally Nilotic populations firmly within the Nile Valley—from Kadero to Meroë—by the early third millennium BCE, suggesting a wider and more integrated presence.Composed of varied distinct identities, they were commonly collectively referred to as the Nehesy by the ancient Egyptians, Aethiopians by the Greeks and Cushi by the Israelites, a term that possibly derived from their own name for themselves.
These communities likely contributed to the development of major civilizations such as the Kingdom of Kush—including Kerma, Napata, and Meroë—and the later Christian kingdoms of Makuria, Nobatia, and Alodia. Genetic and archaeological studies indicate that Nubians were originally a population closely related to Nilotic groups, who later received gene flow from Middle Eastern and East African populations.
One of the earliest known archaeological sites associated with a pastoralist culture bearing Nilotic characteristics is Kadero, located about 48 km north of modern Khartoum, on the east bank of the Nile just upstream from the confluence with the Blue Nile. Dating to around 3000 BCE, Kadero reveals a cattle-herding society that also practiced seed cultivation and fishing. The site contains burial remains with distinct sub-Saharan African features and evidence of long-distance trade, artistry, and mixed subsistence strategies—an economic pattern still observed among later Nilotic groups.
Antiquity
By the 2nd century, descriptions in Ptolemy's Geography, situates a group called the Memnones between the Nile and the Blue Nile, near the region of Meroë. Classical authors often associated this area with mythic "Ethiopians" or descendants of Memnon—a Homeric figure representing powerful peoples of the Upper Nile. The term Ethiopians and their geographic placement in the text overlaps with the historical peoples and heartland of early Nilotic-speaking populations. The Nubei at this time appear only on the periphery of this world, contrasting with the more central Memnones, a group bearing the name of Memnon, the mythic Ethiopian king of Trojan War fame. Their prominence—both mythological and geographic—suggests that they may reflect a residual Kushite aristocracy, remembered or mythologized in the Greco-Roman imagination. Though speculative, the group Ptolemy names the Sapaei, situated south of the Memnones between the Nile and the Astapos, may correspond to early Nilotic populations ancestral to the southern Nilotes. Their described location—likely within modern South Sudan—lies approximately 700–800 km north of Mount Elgon, in a south-southwesterly direction. Ethnographic accounts consistently identify the Mount Elgon region as a pivotal ancestral waypoint in the migration of Southern Nilotic-speaking peoples into Kenya. Among the Kalenjin, Mount Elgon and its residents is sometimes referred to as Kapkugo, meaning "grandparents' place," reflecting its status in cultural memory as an ancestral homeland. The Kalenjin communities living around Elgon—particularly the Sabaot—have historically been grouped under the term Sebei, used in both Ugandan and Kenyan contexts to refer to the Nilotic highland peoples of the area. Similarly, a recurring myth among Tatoga sub-tribes describes a homeland on a high mountain—Endabesht—overlooking two great lakes, widely interpreted as Lake Victoria and Lake Turkana. The memory captured in the name of the town - Endebess, one of the towns nearest to Mount Elgon in Kenya.Expansion out of central Sudan
Between the 5th and 11th centuries CE, Nilotic-speaking groups began expanding southward from central Sudanese regions such as the Gezira into what is now South Sudan. This movement took place during a time of major political and cultural shifts across the Nile Valley. Even as late as the 4th century, the ancient Kushite kingdom still exerted influence in Lower Nubia, as seen in a joint embassy of Ethiopians and Blemmyes to Emperor Constantine around AD 336. But by the 5th century, Kushite political structures had collapsed, creating a power vacuum in the region.The Nilotic migrations gained momentum in the 11th century, coinciding with the arrival of Arab traders in central Sudan. Although these later migrations significantly predate the collapse of the Christian Nubian kingdoms of Makuria and Alodia, they occur after early contact with Arabs, a contact that may have introduced new cultural and technological elements, such as humpless cattle breeds.
According to archaeologist Roland Oliver, this same period also marks the emergence of the Iron Age among Nilotic groups. The combination of declining older polities, incoming lifeways and technologies, and internal cultural developments may have created the conditions that allowed or perhaps forced Nilotic-speaking peoples to expand and adapt to regions further south.